Throw your hat in the
Paganinian ring and you’ll find it pretty
crowded. When it comes to the Op.1 Caprices
there are some immovable objects. Ricci
(1959 but the earlier mono set is visceral
and driven), Accardo – of course – and
Perlman are just three of the most prominent.
Even so performances on disc aren’t
commonplace even in these days of armour-plated
virtuosi so it’s always interesting
to listen to another approach.
Tedi Papavrami is an
Albanian-born, prize-winning fiddle
player who now lives in France. He numbers
Francescatti amongst those who have
guided him and has a busy solo career
performing extensively with like minded
musicians and at festivals – names such
as Starker, Gary Hoffman, Collard, Rampal
and Amoyal show the kind of fast company
he keeps. He’s also the preferred translator
of the Albanian writer Ismaïl Kadaré.
These are of course
amongst the finger busting peaks of
the nineteenth century literature –
indeed of any violin literature – and
require cast iron technique allied to
theatrical flair and commensurate lyricism
in the slower Caprices to give a full
picture of them. Papavrami has made
some well-regarded recordings for Naxos
and Harmonia Mundi amongst others (Prokofiev
Concertos, Sarasate, Peci and more Paganini)
and he’s clearly a musician of perception
and command. He doesn’t evince the ricochet
drama of Ricci in the first, or Perlman’s
crystalline accuracy but he shapes very
musically – though this octave study
should be taken at speed to avoid the
crippling damage to intonation or the
perception at least that the violinist
is out of tune. Throughout he takes
that bit extra time to phrase, and he
takes the repeats as well, being tonally
more appropriate than Ricci in the third,
though sometimes this comes at a cost
– in the folk-like Seventh for instance
Perlman and Ricci sustain the melody
line better at a more emphatically forward
moving tempo. He is certainly a very
precise and neat player – none of Ricci’s
roughening up is allowed in Papavrami’s
Paganini (see the Eighth) and his elegance
is put to fine use in the Ninth, where
the corollary is a smoothing over of
contrasts. His rhythm is subtle – rubati
are of the "heard but not seen"
variety – and accents are well judged,
tone centred, characterisation good.
I did feel he didn’t take enough chances
but perhaps that is to judge him against
an iconoclast like Ricci and ultimately
unfair – though I do think Ricci’s febrile
unpredictability did things with say
the Sixteenth that the younger player
couldn’t countenance. That said I did
admire the burnished bugle introduction
to the Eighteenth – it’s saucy and less
military than it can be and works well,
and in the Nineteenth he does, unusually,
smear his tone to good effect; the drone
of the Twentieth is well sustained.
The acoustic of the
Théâtre des Quatre Saisons
de Gradignan is rather resonant which
can slightly blunt the attacks – it’s
certainly not ideal for this kind of
music but I’ve heard a lot, lot worse.
The recording was made in 1997. Of course
Papavrami doesn’t possess Ricci’s devilry,
that hoarse, risk-taking, tone-smudging,
vibrant-sounding elixir, that magnetic
combustion; nor does he have Accardo’s
breadth of nobility or Perlman’s scintillating,
effortless-sounding command. These,
in their very different ways, are the
front runners. Also you might usefully
acquaint yourself with the recently
released ‘Perlman Rediscovered’ disc
from BMG with three Caprices from his
first, previously unissued sessions.
Jonathan Woolf
Tedi Papavrami (violin) 